[25] Heroic Magmaw

[Boyfriend]

Question about the Magmaw/Construct tanking plan for HM.

How many tanks are needed for the combination of Magmaw + the constructs - is it 1 on the constructs and 2 on Magmaw, swapping at Mangles? Or can you just have 2 tanks sharing Magmaw & constructs? Also, what should the taunt and/or cooldown plan be for Mangles?

Edit: naturally we will continue to have a DPS DK kiting the parasites with no DPS on them.

My guild has had a seperate tank for constructs, but others have used the magmaw tank, if you don't have a seperate tank you probably don't want to have more than 2 constructs up at any time and even limit that to a minimum.

Tanking/killing parasites is not feasible, you need the dps to kill constructs and the boss.

[sakkdaddy]

How do you handle positioning for the final burn phase? I gather that it begins at 30% hp, and the fire nukes become shadow nukes with splash damage so everyone spreads out.

How far do they need to spread out? Does the melee also have to spread out that much? I'm a bit worried that we will need to bench most of our melee again for the last phase, though it's really nice to have more melee for easy cleave damage for most of the fight.

[mosa]

One thing I'm unclear on as well, do the skeletons at some point explode? Or can they be tanked on top of the melee for the duration of the fight (or till you spread out for phase 2) ?

[Brutalus]

One thing I'm unclear on as well, do the skeletons at some point explode? Or can they be tanked on top of the melee for the duration of the fight (or till you spread out for phase 2) ?

When they get to 20% (I think that's the threshold) they start an 8 second cast called Armageddon that explodes for ~70k damage to the whole raid if you don't kill it before it finishes the cast. They can be tanked wherever you want, just make sure that you call out when it's nearing 20% health so most of the dps can switch to it to finish it off.

[Belloc]

One thing I'm unclear on as well, do the skeletons at some point explode? Or can they be tanked on top of the melee for the duration of the fight (or till you spread out for phase 2) ?

When they get to 20% (I think that's the threshold) they start an 8 second cast called Armageddon that explodes for ~70k damage to the whole raid if you don't kill it before it finishes the cast. They can be tanked wherever you want, just make sure that you call out when it's nearing 20% health so most of the dps can switch to it to finish it off.

More like 100k+.

[Boyfriend]

How do you handle positioning for the final burn phase? I gather that it begins at 30% hp, and the fire nukes become shadow nukes with splash damage so everyone spreads out.

How far do they need to spread out? Does the melee also have to spread out that much? I'm a bit worried that we will need to bench most of our melee again for the last phase, though it's really nice to have more melee for easy cleave damage for most of the fight.

Melee have to spread out that much too, but there's no more fire so there's actually more room for melee than before.

[Shadowguyver]

My guild's currently having trouble with heroic Magmaw on 10 man, and we seem to be wiping to the random AoEs in phase 1.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly is killing people in Phase 1 as the spell descriptions on Wowhead seem out of date (eg. Lava Spew is supposedly a 3s channel that deals 30k fire damage/s for 3s, but the real lava spew seems to work a lot differently).

Could someone clarify what exactly Lava Spew and Magma Spit does? Furthermore, is there a timer to see when both are being cast? Thanks!

[inthedrops]

My guild's currently having trouble with heroic Magmaw on 10 man, and we seem to be wiping to the random AoEs in phase 1.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly is killing people in Phase 1 as the spell descriptions on Wowhead seem out of date (eg. Lava Spew is supposedly a 3s channel that deals 30k fire damage/s for 3s, but the real lava spew seems to work a lot differently).

Could someone clarify what exactly Lava Spew and Magma Spit does? Furthermore, is there a timer to see when both are being cast? Thanks!

Lava Spew has a timer, not sure how accurate it is. I use raid cooldowns when I see the DBM warning for it. It does in fact do three ticks of damage.

Magma spit is randomly targeted on people throughout the fight and there's nothing that can be done about it.

The ability that is likely killing your raid more than people realize is called Ignition. It's the fire trails left on the floor where Skeletons spawn.

Any combination of these three abilities will kill someone in 0.5 a second.

Ignition ticks are QUICK. You can take 3 ticks in half a second or so. They tick for, hmmm, off my memory 40+k each. Avoiding Ignition has to be the absolute utmost priority by everyone if you want people to live. It's so severely critical it's not even funny.

The only other scary combo is someone taking a Magma Spit during Lava Spew. If you're counting on AoE heals to keep people alive during Lava Spew, then people need to make sure they are in range of said heals. We had some hunters who would consistently die. When we looked into why, it was because they were standing way out of range and not getting healed during Lava Spew. If they also took a Magma Spit, it would kill them for sure.

Good luck!

[superworm]

Does anyone know how many people you need to stay ranged to ensure the flamepillar doesn't hit melee?

[Rhiannon]

I don't know for certain, but if your plan is to stack everyone in melee range apart from a few, or one if we're talking 10 man I guess, be aware that the meteor that summons the bone constructs (forget the exact spell name) has no preference for ranged or melee (or even tank location for that matter). So if you have most of your raid in melee, chances are that most of the bone constructs will spawn in melee, and you'll get a ton of fires there as a result.

[inthedrops]

I don't know for certain, but if your plan is to stack everyone in melee range apart from a few, or one if we're talking 10 man I guess, be aware that the meteor that summons the bone constructs (forget the exact spell name) has no preference for ranged or melee (or even tank location for that matter). So if you have most of your raid in melee, chances are that most of the bone constructs will spawn in melee, and you'll get a ton of fires there as a result.

...and thus won' be able to dps

[Dirke]

Just a little note to add this this topic, we've killed Magmaw (post-nerf) 2 times now on 25 man heroic and we've only ever 2 tanked it. I handle the boss the entire fight, using my big cd's on mangles, while our Prot War handles all the adds. We kill adds in every non-exposed head phase and always kill one off during the 2nd exposed head phase, this ensures we dont have too many during transition. 3rd head phase we blow lust and push phase 2 with at most 2 adds up.

By 2 tanking this instead of 3 or 4 as i have heard some are doing, we are able to push every 3rd head phase even if we lose bad dps to fire. I dont feel unsafe at all even with the 50% armor debuff.

Anyone else 2 tanking it?

[Kerriodos]

We've been two-tanking since our first kill (post-nerf). Our Death Knight starts on the boss, while I pick up the first two adds. At some point after the MT has built a threat lead, we do fast taunt swap (I have the boss for about a half-second) so that I have aggro when he gets picked up. I blow a cooldown for tanking adds+boss, and our DK picks up the adds as soon as he comes down from the head phase. At this point we swap roles until the next mangle.

DPS is always killing adds when they're up, and on the boss in the interim. We tank the adds on top of the melee to allow the cleaves to hit the boss. Generally we push the boss on about the fourth head phase. Phase two usually leaves only one, maybe two adds up, which we off tank throughout the phase, swapping on mangles.

[d503]

I noticed that the constructs have Fiery Slash, which converts their weapon dmg into fire dmg. Is that on all swings?

If so, it basically trivializes the Mangle debuff for a tank tanking the constructs and allows you to do the two-tank methods mentioned above me.

[Belloc]

I noticed that the constructs have Fiery Slash, which converts their weapon dmg into fire dmg. Is that on all swings?

If so, it basically trivializes the Mangle debuff for a tank tanking the constructs and allows you to do the two-tank methods mentioned above me.

Fiery slash is separate from their melee swing. They do deal physical damage.